In recent years, attention has been given to needs for customer relationship management (CRM) and one-to-one marketing because of shortening of the life cycle of commodities due to the increase in varieties of commodities, consumer's orientation toward customer services as a result of widespread use of the Internet, and other factors. These methods are aimed at increasing the degree of customer's satisfaction and obtaining and retaining customers.
Customer relationship management is a method of improving the degree of customer's satisfaction and, hence, the profitability of a company by adopting measures according to individual needs on the basis of a customer database. One-to-one marketing is a kind of database marketing, i.e., a marketing technique to organize personal attribute information such as customer's ages, sexes, interests, tastes and purchase histories into a database, analyze the information contents and make proposals according to customer's needs. A typical example of application of this technique is variable printing. With the recent development of desktop publishing (DTP) techniques and spreading the use of digital printing apparatuses, variable printing systems capable of customizing documents on a customer-by-customer basis and outputting the customized documents have been developed and a demand has arisen for preparation of documents in which different amounts of contents for different customers are laid out in an optimized fashion.
Conventionally, in variable printing systems, layout frames (also referred to as “container”) are formed on a document and a record or a field in a database satisfying a certain condition is associated with each container as a content of the container. An association is established between a layout and a database in this manner to realize variable printing.
In the conventional variable printing systems, however, the sizes of text and image containers are fixed and, therefore, an overlap of texts or clipping of an image occurs when data from a database is inserted in a container, if the amount of data is larger than the size of the container. Also, a space is left if the amount of data is smaller than the size of the container.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 discloses, as a technique for solving those problems, a technique of reducing the size of a region adjacent to a certain character region is reduced when the size of the character region is increased. In this document is described a method of increasing the size of a character region and reducing the size of a region adjacent to the character region as characters are input to the character region.
As described above, conventional automatic layout techniques capable of dynamically changing the size of a layout frame (container) according to the amount of input text exist.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216 (sections 0025 to 0055, FIGS. 2 and 11) discloses a technique of laying out a plurality of items of merchandise information (merchandise records) in a layout region in a page.
According to this technique, master components (corresponding to the sub-template in the present invention) in which layouts (of names of commodities, images, prices, etc.,) are set in advance are prepared and a setting is made as to which master component should be used with respect to merchandise information items. Data (names of commodities, images, prices, etc.,) included in merchandise information is successively laid out in a layout area designated in a page by being laid out in a predetermined area in the set master component. In this specification, the function of laying out information in one record in conformity with a sub-template and successively laying out a plurality of sub-templates in a flow area is referred to as a multi-record function, and this operation is expressed as “arranging sub-templates in a flow area”.
The description of the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 includes a description of enlargement of a character area with input of text. However, when the size of a character area is increased, an adjacent area is reduced in order to maintain the spacing between these areas. Therefore, there is a problem that as the amount of text to be input is increased, the adjacent area is made smaller and smaller.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-129658 discloses no idea about a variable printing system such as that described above in which contents data is arranged while associating a database and layout areas with each other to prepare documents customized on a customer-by-customer basis.
The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216 requires setting in advance which master component should be used with respect to each record. If, for example, the number of records is significantly large, the number of operations for such setting becomes considerably large as the number of record is increased, resulting in a reduction in user operability.
It is thought that some users want to use the same master component for records having data attributes similar to each other. For example, in a case where a document is prepared by using records 1 to 10, and where the same price data is set with respect to records 2 and 5, it is possible that a user wants to prepare a document by using the same master component with respect records 2 and 5 having common attributes in the records.
In such a case, the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216 requires setting in advance which master component should be used with respect to each record. It is necessary for a user to keep in memory a master component used for record 2 and to select the master component relying on his/her memory at the time of setting of the master component for record 5. At the time of preparation of an ordinary pamphlet or a catalog, however, the number of records is supposed to be enormously large and an increased number of master components are used. In such a situation, the procedure in which a user selects master components depending only on his/her memory cannot be said to be most suitable.
The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216 is unsatisfactory in terms of reliability with which records are contained in a designated layout area, depending on the number of records to be laid out in a layout area. According to this technique, when only a layout area for one page is set, a record can be laid out by being moved to the next candidate layout position. In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-48216, however, no description is given of processing in a situation where moving to the next candidate layout position cannot be performed. As a result of this, a problem occurs that failure to lay out data cannot be avoided.
As an ordinary processing to be performed in a situation where all records cannot be laid out, a method of scaling down data to be laid out is conceivable. However, if the size of data to be laid out is changed, there is a possibility of failure to obtain the layout size according to a user demand.
In a case where a user prepares a pamphlet, a catalog and the like favorable to user's customers, techniques limited to the conventional art are not effective in preparing documents satisfying various customer's tastes while providing improved user operability.
Also, in the conventional multi-record printing (the function of printing a document by laying out a plurality of records in one document), only simple one-hierarchical-level division, i.e., dividing a document only when a particular item in a record is changed, can be performed. For example, when the contents of a “customer's name” item is changed, a document is divided with respect to the contents of the “customer's name” item, i.e., on a customer-by-customer basis. Also, when the contents of a “commodity name” item is changed, a document is divided with respect to the contents of the “commodity name” item, i.e., on a commodity-by-commodity basis. In such multi-record printing, a document division (also called a break) cannot be inserted at the desired position, for example, in a case where there is a need to insert page breaks on a commodity-by-commodity basis. That is, it is difficult to prepare an orderly document or a document with desired divisions.